Slashdot Mirror
Invisible Unmanned Aircraft
MattSparkes writes, "A Minnesota company, VeraTech, has applied for a patent on an unmanned drone that is nearly invisible to the naked eye. The Phantom Sentinel takes advantage of the phenomenon where fast moving objects appear as only a blur, so it fades out of view once it speeds up. This is achieved by rotating the entire craft. The center of gravity is in open air between two of the blade-like wings. There are some videos of a prototype in action on the VeraTech site." The company says you could get usable video of the terrain by processing the images from a spinning camera. One version of the drone is small enough to launch by throwing it like a boomerang. And it folds for travel.
'Catch!'
'Ouch'
No no no, what you're seeing is the craft edited into the video in the first place. You can't see it normally 'cos it's invisible.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
At this point in time I'd say it's the videos themselves.
Is it me, or do the boys in the article in fatigues look like they are like 13? Made for the Army, but cool enough for teens? Hmm, interesting!
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
>> "This thing probably sticks out like dogs balls on radar."
Excuse my asking, but how well do Dog-balls stand out on Radar?
Removing the dog balls from the B-2 bomber reduced its radar return by 42%.
Really.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Once it gets up to a certain speed, will the optical illusion cause it to appear to be spinning very slowly in the opposite direction? It might be easy to identify then.
Invisible Plane?
I build one of these things years ago. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it since its first test flight.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Man, will they be pissed when they see this.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Did anybody else think of the similarity between VeraTech and Veritech of the Robotech anime? The article summary even says "...it folds..." - a transformation just like the Veritech Fighter to humanoid form!
I'm a hippie and I find your comment mildly offensive. If you added long hair to that description I would have you reported to the blog's moderators.
Meh. Just get them to think that looking for planes is somebody else's problem.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
might actually be pretty useful against the Swiss
Oh I don't think so.
Chuck one of those at the thing and it's sure to go down.
You can't take the sky from me...